Cryptocurrency

As so-called “memecoins” capture the attention of the wider crypto industry in recent weeks, a viral video has emerged detailing just how easy it is for anyone with an internet connection to create a brand new cryptocurrency from scratch.  A May 6 video from digital artist Johnny Shankman — who goes by @whitelights.eth on Twitter

Top Stories This Week Memecoin hype drives Bitcoin transaction fees to multi-year highs The ongoing trading frenzy of memecoins like Pepe has triggered an unwanted consequence for Bitcoin (BTC) — raising its transaction costs to their highest point in two years. On May 3, the total amount of fees paid on the Bitcoin blockchain reached

Confidence in the United States financial system seems to be eroding fast with investors trying to find the next weakest link that is about to collapse. Bill Ackman, CEO of hedge fund management firm Pershing Square, cautioned that time was running out to fix the problem. The U.S. equities markets have become vulnerable to adverse

Smart contract auditor CertiK claims to have blocked $160,000 from Merlin, a zk-Sync-based decentralized exchange (DEX) which has been the center of a rogue insider “rugpull” that lost users $1.8 million last week. CertiK shared the news of its successful $160,000 freeze of the stolen funds in an update to its 257,700 Twitter followers on

There’s a narrative that’s grown up around Ethereum’s two most important co-founders, Joe Lubin and Vitalik Buterin, to explain how they went in different directions almost a decade ago. It suggests the pair fell out over the blockchain’s future direction, with the idealistic 20-year-old Buterin determined to turn Ethereum into a nonprofit foundation, while Lubin

On May 2, European cryptocurrency investment firm CoinShares published its latest “Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly Report,” which stated that the digital asset market experienced bearish sentiment for the second consecutive week, resulting in outflows totaling $72 million. The report noted that the bearish sentiment could be attributed to the probability of further interest rate hikes

The majority of people will have their wealth progressively eaten away by the devaluation of money, according to Arthur Hayes, the co-founder and former CEO of crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX.  According to Hayes, due to the huge amount of public debt accumulated by the world’s largest economies, governments will have no choice but “inflating it

JPMorgan Chase emerged as the winner in the auction to acquire the deposits and a “substantial majority of assets” of the troubled bank First Republic. This marked the failure of the third regional bank in the United States since March and laid open the vulnerabilities in the legacy banking system. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) has risen

Risky assets marginally extend their up-move in April. The S&P 500 Index rose around 1.5% in April while Bitcoin (BTC) is on track to end the month with gains of more than 4%. Could the rally continue in May or is it time for a pullback? The recovery could face headwinds if the United States

Top Stories This Week Circle launches cross-chain USDC transfer protocol Circle launched a cross-chain protocol that enables USDC transfers between the Ethereum and Avalanche blockchains. The protocol works by burning the selected amount of native USDC on the source chain, and minting an equivalent amount of new USDC on the intended destination chain. The protocol

The cryptocurrency market witnessed sharp volatility on April 26 on rumors that large sums of Bitcoin (BTC) were on the move from the wallets linked to the defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox and the United States government. A minor positive is that Bitcoin and select altcoins held their respective support levels. After Bitcoin’s sharp rally

Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments. Hong Kong inching close on a clear crypto regulatory pathway A few months after prominent industry players lamented the lack of registration pathways for cryptocurrency exchanges in Hong Kong, some respite may finally be on the horizon. On Apr. 27, Julia

The team behind Lens, a Web3 social media protocol, has announced the launch of a new “layer 3” network to scale blockchain social media apps. Called “Bonzai,” the new network processes and stores posts, comments and shares, taking this data off the Polygon network and thereby increasing scalability for Lens, according to an April 26

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), led by Chairman Gary Gensler, has been at the forefront of the United States’ cryptocurrency crackdown. In the last few months, the agency has filed several enforcement actions against major crypto companies that allegedly violated security laws. Critics say the agency has adopted a regulation-by-enforcement approach without providing a

Unlike restricted proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains like Bitcoin, the Polkadot blockchain allows cross-blockchain transfers of any asset or data, facilitates more transactions per second and needs less infrastructure. Polkadot uses a nominated proof-of-stake (NPoS) blockchain centered on interoperability of parachains that connect to and are secured by the Relay Chain. Validators can validate both the Relay

Bitcoin (BTC) managed to stay above $27,000 for the past three days but its 9% loss last week spooked some newbie traders. Glassnode data shows that short-term holders, who acquired Bitcoin less than 155 days ago, have been moving coins to the exchanges at a loss since April 16.  While short-term traders are panicking and

Reminiscent of Tamagotchi and Pokémon, the wildly popular digital pets and creatures of the 1990s, CryptoKitties is a blockchain-based game where players can collect, trade and breed digital virtual cats. CryptoKitties was the first Ethereum-based game, and its popularity underscored many of the network’s scaling issues. This digital cat-breeding blockchain game caused quite a bit

Top Stories This Week Elon Musk threatens Microsoft with lawsuit, claims AI trained on Twitter data Microsoft has been threatened with a lawsuit from Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who claimed the Big Tech firm “illegally” trained its artificial intelligence on Twitter data. The entrepreneur suggested that Microsoft mined user tweets to train its AI-powered applications.

Dogecoin suffered a big blow on April 20, popularly known as “Dogeday” thanks to the failed test launch of SpaceX’s Starship rocket and downturn in the broader crypto market.  The SpaceX rocket, which featured the Dogecoin mascot on its side, disintegrated four minutes after its launch. Still, the company’s employees including Elon Musk cheered the

Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments. Three Arrows Capital (3AC), a once bourgeoning Singaporean hedge fund worth an estimated $10 billion at is peak, was utterly obliterated by the bear market last year. However, the carnival it has created since the initial blowup still lives on, and